When I was 17 years old I found out that I was 8 weeks pregnant. My boyfriend with whom I was "shacking up" was a 24-year old physically and emotionally abusive alcoholic. I decided to keep the pregnancy a secret until I was beyond 12 weeks pregnant knowing that he would want an abortion and I mistakenly thought that this was the maximum gestation for having one. When I did tell him, he was furious and insisted that the child be aborted as soon as possible. I told him that it was too late to have one and he informed me that the clinic in fact performs abortions up to 16 weeks of gestation.

This news broke my heart. I did not want to kill this baby, but my co-dependence and addiction to this man won out. I finally made an appointment with the abortion clinic. When the day arrived, a friend picked me up for the drive. My boyfriend refused to accompany me, telling me it was a "simple procedure" and I would "be in and out quickly." It was a long, terrible drive, I remember crying all the way up. This was the last thing in the world that I wanted to do, so why was I going along with it just to keep this man in my life? Why didn't I just leave him and stop living this awful life of sin, completely void of morals and ethics? All I could think about was the size of the baby, what it must weigh and the level of development it was at. I had already begun to feel a bond with this tiny life inside me. I felt like my whole world was caving in and everybody around me just wanted to me to get rid of this problem. I should have said no but I was too weak and dependent.

When we arrived at the abortion clinic, my friend and I were directed to a waiting room that was packed full of young girls. Everything seemed surreal. Even though each of these girls was about to commit the same atrocity as I was, I couldn't help thinking, "I don't belong here." I just cried through the whole wait. As each minute passed, I kept hoping that the medical staff would run out of time and have to send me away.

But, eventually I was called in and given a small written questionnaire whose purpose was to ensure that I was certain of this decision. I slowly checked off the answers, crying and trembling with fear and horror. I was sure that my obvious mental state would force them to reject me. They had told me over the telephone that due to the seriousness of this act, if they had any indication that I was not prepared to proceed, they couldn't allow me to do so. I remember being so surprised that this wasn't even considered. My mental state obviously didn't matter to them, they were only interested in one thing.

Instead of counseling me about the procedure and my emotional condition, they gave me some "pills" that they said would "calm my nerves." Then I went into the room where my child's fate would lie. There were many horrible looking surgical tools laid out on a table beside the bed. The doctor and nurses entered the room and none of them really talked to me at all; they seemed rather hurried, almost annoyed with me. One nurse bitterly told me to, "calm down, everything will be fine." I felt like a burden to them.

There was a drape covering my legs, but I could see the doctor moving about quickly and roughly. I could feel a lot of cramping in my abdomen and I realized that it was the sharp tools ripping apart my child. I imagined them first removing the arms, then the legs and the head. Then, I watched as a vacuum machine with a tube attached to it began sucking out the pieces of this little body. The tube was actually clear so I could see a tremendous amount of blood and clumpy masses passing through it. The pain was unspeakable, both physically and emotionally. The machine was loud and the suction made the most gruesome sound that I will never forget. I would rather listen to the sound of a dentist's drill in my ear for eternity than to hear that sound ever again for even a moment; the gruesome sound of a baby being sucked from the mother's womb.

The procedure took a significant amount of time, and I found out the reason why after it was over. With sarcasm, the apathetic doctor told me, "Well, you were a lot further along than 16 weeks." It turns out that I was actually 18 to 20 weeks pregnant.A nurse then told me that I could use an adjacent bathroom to clean up. I slid off the bed and felt so weary, in shock and in pain that my friend had to hold me up. As I slowly made my way toward the bathroom, I looked down and saw a drop of my blood about the size of a half-dollar fall to the floor. Seeing that blood clarified what I had done and I will never forget it. That was all that was left of my child. That was it.

I discarded my baby at a clinic of death that night, brutally murdered and left to rot in a sink. That child did not deserve that heinous murder. They told me the recovery time would be a couple of days with some mild cramping and light bleeding. Well, this was totally downplayed, when in fact there were several days of significant abdominal pain and an extraordinary amount of bleeding, so much that I had to wear diapers for a week. It's funny, they informed me about the cost of the abortion and the amount of time it should take to be completed, but what they didn't tell me about was the nightmares I would have for months afterwards or the tremendous shame that I would feel. They didn't tell me that I would be riddled with guilt and regret for the rest of my life and fear of being able to give a healthy birth in the future. The guilt, shame and fear that I feel are minute compared to the brutality that I condemned my unborn child to, but it's odd how the Pro-Choicers illustrate this horror as a simple procedure when the truth is that it is nothing short of a brutal massacre of a human life.

I will now have to live with the choice I made for the rest of my life. I allowed a "doctor of death" to enter my womb, literally tear my child apart and suck it out of my body. This baby never had a chance to smile, dream, laugh or cry. His or her life was savagely snuffed out. Is this what Pro-Choice means? That you have the choice to have your unborn human baby diced up and violently sucked out of your body and down a sink drain?

The sole purpose of that abortion clinic is to murder human babies, herding women through like cattle, not so far off from what Hitler did in WWII. They did not halt the procedure upon observing my obvious mental state, proving that there was absolutely no concern for this irreversible decision that I was about to undertake. They were cold and ill-mannered during the procedure.

Women have been so blessed by God with the most beautiful gift of being the caretaker of life; unfortunately the world has given them the right to end life. This should not be a right of women but rather illegal as it is cold-blooded murder in the first degree.

I am now 29 years old, married to a loving, devoted husband and have a beautiful little girl whom I treasure with all my heart. And on May 21 of this year, I gave my heart to Christ. I was saved and delivered from evil. My Lord forgave me of my sins and for the first time in my life, I am truly happy. It will continue to be a journey of healing, but now that I have Christ in my life, everything is possible. He has given me an Amazing Grace and a new life. He's also given me immeasurable strength, love and guidance. Although the sin I committed on March 15, 1989 remains fresh in my mind, my old life also seems a distant memory as I embark on my walk with Jesus.